BIG successes of Lisp (was ...)

[mike420]

In the context of LATEX, some Pythonista asked what the big
successes of Lisp were. I think there were at least three *big*
successes.

a. orbitz.com web site uses Lisp for algorithms, etc.
b. Yahoo store was originally written in Lisp.
c. Emacs

The issues with these will probably come up, so I might as well
mention them myself (which will also make this a more balanced
post)

a. AFAIK Orbitz frequently has to be shut down for maintenance
(read "full garbage collection" - I'm just guessing: with
generational garbage collection, you still have to do full
garbage collection once in a while, and on a system like that
it can take a while)

b. AFAIK, Yahoo Store was eventually rewritten in a non-Lisp.
Why? I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you :)

c. Emacs has a reputation for being slow and bloated. But then
it's not written in Common Lisp.

Are ViaWeb and Orbitz bigger successes than LATEX? Do they
have more users? It depends. Does viewing a PDF file made
with LATEX make you a user of LATEX? Does visiting Yahoo
store make you a user of ViaWeb?

For the sake of being balanced: there were also some *big*
failures, such as Lisp Machines. They failed because
they could not compete with UNIX (SUN, SGI) in a time when
performance, multi-userism and uptime were of prime importance.
(Older LispM's just leaked memory until they were shut down,
newer versions overcame that problem but others remained)

Another big failure that is often _attributed_ to Lisp is AI,
of course. But I don't think one should blame a language
for AI not happening. Marvin Mins ky, for example,
blames Robotics and Neural Networks for that.

[Donn Cave]

Quoth "Rainer Deyke" <ra*****@eldwoo d.com>:
....
| I understand both the specification and the implementation of finalization
| in Python, as well as the reasoning behind them. My point is, I would
| prefer it if Python guaranteed immediate finalization of unreferenced
| objects. Maybe I'll write a PEP about if someday.

Write code first! I think most would see it as a good thing,
but I have the impression from somewhere that a guarantee of
immediate finalization might not be a practical possibility,
given reference cycles etc. Between that and the fact that the
present situation is close enough that few people care about the
difference, an implementation would really help your cause.

Donn Cave, do**@drizzle.co m

[Nikodemus Siivola]

In comp.lang.lisp Bjorn Pettersen <bj************ *@comcast.net> wrote:

I'm not the one worrying here <wink>. I know exactly what Python does
and it is no cognitive burden.

"To foil the maintenance engineer, you must understand how he thinks."

Cheers,

-- Nikodemus

[Stephen Horne]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2003 19:33:17 +0200, an***@vredegoor .doge.nl (Anton
Vredegoor) wrote:

Stephen Horne <st***@ninereed s.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

Perception is not reality. It is only a (potentially flawed)
representatio n of reality. But reality is still real. And perception
*is* tied to reality as well as it can be by the simple pragmatic
principle of evolution - if our ancestors had arbitrary perceptions
which were detached from reality, they could not have survived and had
children.

If we had the same perceptions about reality as our ancestors, we
wouldn't reproduce very successfully now, because the world has
changed as a result of their reproductive success.

Except for the fact that (1) people, at least those with power,
changed the world to suit themselves, and (2) the things that really
count for perception haven't changed - objects are still objects and
still follow the same laws of physics, for instance, even if there are
occasional novel touches such as some of those objects having engines.
--
Steve Horne

steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk

[Stephen Horne]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2003 20:58:13 +0100, Robin Becker
<ro***@jessikat .fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

In article <rd************ *************** *****@4ax.com>, Stephen Horne
<st***@nineree ds.fsnet.co.uk> writes

On Fri, 24 Oct 2003 16:00:12 +0200, an***@vredegoor .doge.nl (Anton
Vredegoor) wrote:

......

Perception is not reality. It is only a (potentially flawed)
representatio n of reality. But reality is still real. And perception
*is* tied to reality as well as it can be by the simple pragmatic
principle of evolution - if our ancestors had arbitrary perceptions
which were detached from reality, they could not have survived and had
children.

.....
It is a commonplace of developmental psychology that the persistence of
objects is learned by children at some relatively young age (normally 3
months as I recall). I assume that children learn the persistence of
hidden objects by some statistical mechanism ie if it happens often
enough it must be true (setting up enough neural connections etc).

Would the reality of children subjected to a world where hidden objects
were somehow randomly 'disappeared' be more or less objective then that
of normal children.

Unlucky experimental cats brought up in vertical stripe worlds were
completely unable to perceive horizontals so their later reality was
apparently filled with invisible and mysterious objects. I can't
remember if they could do better by rotating their heads, but even that
would be quite weird.

I think it unwise to make strong statements about reality when we know
so little about it. Apparently now the universe is 90-95% stuff we don't
know anything about and we only found that out in the last 10 years.

Actually, a great deal is understood about precisely that mechanism
you describe. There is nothing mysterious about it. Even innate
processes depend of certain features of the environment which
evolution has effectively assumed constant, such as - for the cats
example above - the presence of various angles of rough lines in the
environment. If these features do not occur at the correct
developmental stage, the processes that wire the appropriate neurons
together simply don't occur. Evolution is nothing if not pragmatic.

As for children subjected to a world where hidden objects suddenly
disappeared, you may be surprised. I am not aware of anyone doing that
precise experiment for obvious moral reasons, but if you know where to
look you can find evidence...

The human brain continues developing after birth. It cannot be fully
developed at birth, as with most animals, because of the limits of the
human female hip bone. Continued brain developement after birth does
NOT automatically mean learning, therefore.

Take for instance social development. Human cruelty knowing no bounds,
there have been children who were shut away from all human interaction
by their parents. These children do *not* become autistic - even when
found well into their teenage years, and despite the symptoms of
traumatic stress, such children socialise remarkably well and
extremely quickly - far faster than they learn language, for instance
- whereas an autistic may never learn good socialisation despite a
lifetime of intense effort (I speak from experience).

Reason - a substantial part of socialisation is innate (and thus
accessible without learning), but neurological damage prevents that
innate socialisation ability from developing.

Even if this was not the case, you have not proved that reality is not
real. Of course perception still varies slightly from person to
person, and more extensively from species to species, but it is not
independent of reality - it still has to be tied to reality as closely
as possible or else it is useless.
--
Steve Horne

steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk

[Robin Becker]

In article <2a************ *************** *****@4ax.com>, Stephen Horne
<st***@ninereed s.fsnet.co.uk> writes

Even if this was not the case, you have not proved that reality is not
real. Of course perception still varies slightly from person to
person, and more extensively from species to species, but it is not
independent of reality - it still has to be tied to reality as closely
as possible or else it is useless.

Actually it was not my intention to attempt any such proof, merely to
indicate that what we call real is at the mercy of perception. If I
choose to call a particular consensus version of reality the 'one true
reality' I'm almost certainly wrong. As with most of current physics we
understand that 'reality' is a model. An evolution based on low speed
physics hardly prepares us for quantum mechanics and spooky action at a
distance interactions. For that reality, which we cannot perceive, we
employ mathematicians as interpreters (priests?) to argue about the
number of hidden dimensions etc etc. Even causality is frowned upon in
some circles.

What we humans call 'reality' is completely determined by our senses and
the instruments we can build. How we interpret the data is powerfully
influenced by our social environment and history. As an example the
persistence of material objects is alleged by some to be true only for
small time scales <10^31 years; humans don't have long enough to learn
that.
--
Robin Becker

[Drazen Gemic]

> Python doesn't try (too) hard to change the ordinary manner of thinking,

just to be as transparent as possible. I guess in that sense it encourages a
degree of mental sloth, but the objective is executable pseudocode. Lisp

I have started with Python because I needed a fast way to develop
solutions using OO. Python fullfiled my expectations.

The point is that I have started with Python because I was missing
something, not because I wanted to expand my knowledge.

Learning one programming language is a burden, because there is always to
little time for everything.

Lisp is probably cool, but what will I gain from Lisp ? What will
justify my investment, I mean spent time ?

DG

[Stephen Horne]

On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 16:00:14 +0100, Robin Becker
<ro***@jessikat .fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

In article <2a************ *************** *****@4ax.com>, Stephen Horne
<st***@nineree ds.fsnet.co.uk> writes

Even if this was not the case, you have not proved that reality is not
real. Of course perception still varies slightly from person to
person, and more extensively from species to species, but it is not
independent of reality - it still has to be tied to reality as closely
as possible or else it is useless.

Actually it was not my intention to attempt any such proof, merely to
indicate that what we call real is at the mercy of perception. If I
choose to call a particular consensus version of reality the 'one true
reality' I'm almost certainly wrong.
True. But perception cannot change reality. Reality is not about
perception - it existed long before there was anything capable of
percieving.

What we *normally* call real is normally a perception, or more
precisely (as you say) a model, and not the actual reality. But at
least when that model has been built up from experimental evidence, it
is vanishingly unlikely to have approached anything other than
reality. The model defined by science has limits and inaccuracies of
course, but it is not credible to claim that it is arbitrary.
What we humans call 'reality' is completely determined by our senses and
the instruments we can build.

Not at all. What our senses and instuments are observing is real,
*not* arbitrary, and *not* affected by perception. Our perceptions are
dependent on reality, even though they cannot be a perfect. We are not
free to define perception arbitrarily precisely because it is a
representation of reality, derived from the information provided by
our senses.

As I already mentioned, if a primitive person observes a car and
theorises that there is a demon under the hood, that does not become
true. Reality does not care about anyones perceptions as it is not
dependent on them in any way - perceptions are functionally dependent
on reality, and our perceptions are designed to form a useful model of
reality.

If there was no reality, there would be no common baseline for our
perceptions and therefore no reason for any commonality between them.
In fact there would be no reason to have perceptions at all.
--
Steve Horne

steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk

[Robin Becker]

In article <3f************ *************** *****@4ax.com>, Stephen Horne
<st***@ninereed s.fsnet.co.uk> writes

As I already mentioned, if a primitive person observes a car and
theorises that there is a demon under the hood, that does not become
true. Reality does not care about anyones perceptions as it is not
dependent on them in any way - perceptions are functionally dependent
on reality, and our perceptions are designed to form a useful model of
reality.

We observe electrons and make up mathematical theories etc etc, but in
reality little demons are driving them around. :)

Your assertion that there is an objective reality requires proof as
well. Probably it cannot be proved, but must be made an axiom. The
scientific method requires falsifiability.

The fact is we cannot perceive well enough to determine reality. The
physicists say that observation alters the result so if Heisenberg is
right there is no absolute reality. Perhaps by wishing hard I can get my
batteries to last longer 1 time in 10^67.

Awareness certainly mucks things up in socio-economic systems which are
also real in some sense. I hear people putting forward the view that
time is a construct of our minds; does time flow?

This is a bit too meta-physical, but then much of modern physics is like
that. Since much of physics is done by counting events we are in the
position of the man who having jumped out of the top floor observes that
all's well after falling past the third floor as falling past floors
10,9,... etc didn't hurt. We cannot exclude exceptional events.
--
Robin Becker

[Tayss]

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters <me***@gnosis.c x> wrote in message news:<ma******* *************** *************** @python.org>...

Incidentally, I have never seen--and expect never to see--some new
mysterious domain where Python is too limited because the designers did
not forsee the problem area. Nor similarly with other very high level
languages. It NEVER happens that you just cannot solve a problem
because of the lack of some novel syntax to do so... that's what
libraries are for.

The problem I have with this argument is, people already invent little
"languages" whenever they create new libraries. Right now I'm working
with wxPython. Here's an idiom that comes up (you don't need to
understand it):

app = wxPySimpleApp()
frame = MainWindow(None , -1, "A window")
frame.Show(True )
app.MainLoop()

Here, I have to put each line in a magical order. Deviate the
slightest bit, the thing crashes hard. It is hard to work with this
order; wxPython inherited an old design (not wxPython's fault), and
it's showing its age.

I'd fix it, but functions don't give me that power. I need to specify
the order of execution, because GUIs are all about side-effects --
macros are a solution worth having in your belt.

I am chained to wxPython's language. It's a language that is
basically Python-in-a-weird-order. Why not accept we need good
abstraction facilities because code has a habit of spiralling into
unmaintainabili ty?

I'm not slamming Python or wxPython, since for this project they're
objectively better than today's CL. My only point is macros shouldn't
be underestimated. Especially since there are lots of things built
into lisp to make macros nice to use. (Like the macroexpand function,
which shows you what macros turn into.) Even if macros are
objectively wrong for Python, people should still know about them.

[Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk]

On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 20:57:58 -0700, Tayss wrote:

app = wxPySimpleApp()
frame = MainWindow(None , -1, "A window")
frame.Show(True )
app.MainLoop()

Here, I have to put each line in a magical order. Deviate the
slightest bit, the thing crashes hard. It is hard to work with this
order; wxPython inherited an old design (not wxPython's fault), and
it's showing its age.

I'd fix it, but functions don't give me that power.
Why?
I need to specify the order of execution,

What's the problem in specifying the order of execution in functions?

--
__("< Marcin Kowalczyk
\__/ qr****@knm.org. pl
^^ http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/